March 23, 2010, will go down in U.S. history as a day of infamy. It was the day Barack Obama signed into law the so-called Affordable Care Act, an unconstitutional piece of legislation that a majority of Americans clearly did not want.

Now, with Obamacare in its final death throes, it appears to be headed for the Trumpster. Of course, no one knows exactly what DT will put in its place, but we should have a pretty good idea very soon. Let’s hope for the best and not expect the worst.

The most important thing is to act fast and get rid of Obamacare immediately, before the Radical Left has an opportunity to put out more fake news in an attempt to obfuscate the truth about this hideous piece of legislation. And the truth is that it’s nothing more than a complex scam sold to the public on a foundation of lies.

The lies were essential, because without over-the-top, outright lying, the American public would have revolted against this arrogant government overreach early on. And what’s especially offensive about it is that Obama and his surrogates, both in and out of Congress, fully realized it would fail from the outset, which they hoped would lead to single-payer, government-controlled healthcare.

If there was any doubt about it, the scam was inadvertently exposed in 2013 when John Gruber, one of the architects of Obamacare, was caught on video laughing and bragging to a panel how he and his cohorts had gotten the legislation passed.

Said Gruber, in part, “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And, basically — call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever — but basically that was really critical to get for the thing to pass. Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”

From whence came those infamous and embarrassing lies: “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor — period.” “If you like your healthcare plan, you’ll be able to keep your healthcare plan — period.”

It goes without saying that Obama has never once apologized or even acknowledged that he made these and similar statements dozens of times. When you sincerely believe that the people you’re hurting are beneath you, you don’t feel the need to apologize.

Even the official name for Obamacare, “The Affordable Care Act,” is a lie. If Obamacare is anything, it is most decidedly not affordable. Despite promises of lower insurance premiums for everyone, premiums have spiraled out of control — in some cases, up as much as 100 percent.

None of this should come as a surprise, given that Obamacare was never intended to help anyone. It’s real purpose from the outset was to (1) redistribute wealth and (2) increase government’s stranglehold over people’s lives. After all, 85 percent of Americans already owned health insurance, and polls showed that most of them were quite happy with their policies.

The Dirty Dems used their age-old strategy of pushing through unpopular laws by whatever means necessary, then, when people start realizing that the new law is bad for most Americans, they yell and scream that you can’t repeal it because too many folks now depend on its benefits. Let’s face it, it’s a cute little trick, and one that is used over and over again by the Dirty Dems. And with good reason: It works!

So it’s not surprising that the Radical Left is now yelling and screaming that 30 million people will lose their healthcare if Obamacare is repealed. It’s like a movie you’ve seen over and over again, but, as is usually the case, it’s a complete a ruse.

Why? Because, first of all, most of those 30 million people didn’t have medical insurance to begin with. The only reason most of them have healthcare today is because others — those who did have health insurance and whose premiums have gone up since the implementation of Obamacare — are paying for them. Again, Obamacare was never about creating a better healthcare system. It has always been about redistribution of wealth and people control!

If Obama and the Dirty Dems had really been interested in doing what was best for all Americans at the lowest possible cost, all they needed to do was target the 30 million or so citizens who were uninsured and pay for their health costs directly as a separate budgetary item.

No draconian law required, no new giant bureaucracy created. Just keep it simple by paying for the uninsured. I’m not saying that I necessarily would have supported the idea, but it certainly would have been simpler and far less expensive.

America already had the best healthcare system in the world, but the goal of the angry young community organizer in the White House was to destroy it. And, give him credit, he did what he set out to do, though it was (hopefully) only a temporary destruction.

Of course, many folks want to know why Obamacare has to be replaced with anything if we already had a healthcare system that was the envy of the world. In theory, I’m sympathetic to that question, but through the years I’ve become more of a pragmatist than a libertarian ideologue.

Let me make it clear that I eschew ridiculous statements like “healthcare is right, not a privilege,” because it most certainly is not a right. But the pragmatic (or humane) side of me doesn’t like the idea of people suffering from a lack of good healthcare.

So, one way or another, I’d like to see everyone have access to good healthcare, including those at the bottom end of the income spectrum. My only caveat is that the United States cannot afford to pay for medical care for everyone in the world, so anyone who violates our immigration laws and is here illegally should not have access to free healthcare — or any other government benefits.

That said, how Donald Trump addresses this biggest of all issues confronting him will tell us a lot about how serious he is about following through on his promises. Figuring out how to make 2 + 2 = 5 is not an easy task, but the fact is that he will have to figure out how to implement his agenda without bankrupting the country — i.e., bankrupting it more than it already is.

+Robert Ringer is an American icon whose unique insights into life have helped millions of readers worldwide. He is also the author of two New York Times #1 bestselling books, both of which have been listed by The New York Times among the 15 best-selling motivational books of all time.

46 responses to “Finally, the End of the Affordable Care Scam”

I agree. What DT does regarding Obamacare is a litmus test as to how he shall keep his other campaign promises. And boy oh boy! Did he make a lot of BIG promises.

Of course, I've always known that the USA has been turned into a collectivist nation long, long ago. Too many promises to too many people for too long of a time are what has been made by politicians for decades. So Trump's grandiose promises are nothing new; however, his grandiosity lacks the fatal conceit of people like Obama. So Trump is a better man and therefore a better president.

But let's face the facts. The GOP and the MSM long ago misled the ignorant masses into believing that free-market capitalism was bad and a managed economy was good. Ludwig von Mises points out better than any other man how the GOP sold out America by stigmatizing free-market capitalism. And when you lack free markets for healthcare, it's only a matter of time before the government tells both you and your doctor what, where, when, why and how you can be treated… Trump isn't ushering in free-market capitalism, he's giving you an empire….And what you get is Empire Healthcare.

EXACTLY! The GOVT. must GET OUT of healthcare period, in order for it to be high-quality, competitively-priced and available to the most possible. Since we all have different priorities, most younger people will not opt to purchase health care (they would accept it as part of their employment benefits is about it), and a free market would give us different coverages for different prices. Not everyone can afford a Mercedes, BMW or Lexus, but are perfectly happy with a Honda, Ford, or Chevy. Does the govt. demand that ALL have the right to own the Mercedes? It is complete absurdity promoted by the libtard "progressives" as they want govt. controlling EVERY aspect of human life. Ever since 1965 with LBJ, Medicare and Medicaid and govt. intrusion into health care has it become much more expensive, less available as part of employee benefits, and non-competitive. LvM of course understood this, but today's "thinking-challenged" pubic is not so astute, so are easily deceived by the liars in the media and govt.

Really well said. The GOP has been abjectly impotent and corrupt in its messaging. One reason it has been so witless in opposing Obamacare. Those insurance companies have lots and lots of dollars to spread around Congress. Absolutely vile fascism.

This is a great article. It explains the scam quite well. I have often complained about the complicated nature of this law. But, I suppose since it is essentially a TAX, not a health care program, what else would you expect? It must be hard making the TAX code more complicated! Of course, Obama lied before Obamacare was passed saying it was NOT a TAX, then arguing to the Supreme Court that it WAS a TAX in order to salvage the program. And, numb nuts John Roberts re-wrote the language to render the unconstitutional law suddenly constitutional. Obama lied BIG TIME when running by saying NO ONE making less than $ 250,000 would pay a singe DIME of ANY KIND of TAX. (Only those evil people who make $ 250K….right). Who ends up paying? As always, it's the middle class. And, Bill Clinton had it right pre election…saying Obamacare was "crazy". Some people making $ 50K might get healhcare for free, others making $ 60K might pay 30K for healhcare. Why bother working? The whole Obamacare program was "smoke and mirrors". A big time complicated TAX program, and, government control program, and massive LIE. A program to help the poor could no doubt be simplified and better. The cost of supporting Obamacare bureaucracy could be better used support actual healthcare.

Let's be clear: it isn't just insurance premiums that cause a huge cost problem. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, in 2015 the US was last among 35 industrialized nations in total health care per-capita expenditures at $9,451. The next highest cost per person was Switzerland at $6,935. Until we address this systemic problem little else will matter. In my view, here are a few of the key causes for our inordinately high costs:
– taxes on medical equipment are too high
– lack of genuine competition in health care delivery
– torts and shakedowns
– lack of genuine competition in insurance
– fraud and waste in Medicare and Medic-aid
….and more.

Repealing Obamacare is relatively simple, if not easy; it is a tax. Remember, the US Supreme Court told us as much in their landmark decision. So, we need only repeal a tax called the "Affordable Care Act."

HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED HOW COCK – SURE OF HIMSELF THE BO IS? I ALWAYS TURNED HIM OFF – CHANGED THE CHANNEL WHEN HE WAS ON BUT I HEARD ENOUGH BEFOREHAND TO SEE THERE IS NO WAY HE WILL EVER ADMIT HE DID ANYTHING WRONG, STUPID, OR IGNORANT. DITTO THE "MO", HIS "BETTER HALF". WHATEVER IS IN STORE FOR US, HAS TO BE BETTER THAN WHAT WE GOT WITH WHAT WE'VE HAD FOR LAST 8 YEARS.

I can see a lot of healthy, young and invincible, or wealthy people opting out of obamacare and paying the penalty. If that happens costs of a plan will shift even higher to the middle class. Then what?

Obamacare failed because of the massive amount of force put on healthcare providers and insurers. Coercion never solves problems, just makes them worse. The solution to problems is new products. There is no need for a new law, one already exists. It is called the Law of Supply and Demand. The failure of Obamacare is the result of efforts by those who have no understanding of this simple natural law that cannot be altered by politicians no matter how hard they try. Of course this is why they fail at everything.

My son cannot afford the "low insurance rates" on his income. So he is "taxed" because of it. His income, fresh out of school does not support such a large expense. What a joke! It's like he has two car payments on his small income!

Is he making under 46 K a year.? If he is, then he should go ahead and get the subsidy. Sure…it's bad…and wrong… but at least he will have health care. You know, as long as they are giving health care to all, we might as well take it. Personally though, I can't wait to be off Obamacare and be uninsured again. What a relief it will be when I can I worry about my healthcare cost again.

Correction Billy – even if the kid takes the subsidy and has health insurance, it's no guarantee he'll have health CARE. I was on an Obamaplan that offered subsidized premiums. Then I needed emergency health services. I was presented with an $8000 bill from the hospital, x ray techs, ambulance service and emergency room physician. O-care paid NOT ONE DIME. I did get some "discount" off the cost of those services, but it threw me into financial hardship. After which, I was moved off O-care and thrown onto the Medicaid program. After much fiscal rearranging and negotiating, I was able to get the medical costs reduced dramatically, but I still paid more out of pocket than I would have had I been able to purchase a catastrophic care policy through what had been a freer market. O-care put the one provider in my state that offered such coverage out of business, as they didn't want to deal with all of the federal mandates. I'm back to work now, and am paying less for comprehensive health insurance via my employer than I did for my O-care plan.

Um, according to the World Health Organization, American health care ranks 37th in the world and that's behind Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Columbia. However, the unnecessary suffering and death visited upon those who can't pay is one way to reduce a poverty stricken work force no longer needed in this age of automation and job export to cheaper wage countries. Social Darwinism is busy here.

Not anymore. You can go to Spain and live there for two years, have hip replacement surgery and still pay less than having surgery here. Many Americans are going to Thailand, Brazil, etc. for surgery and treatments because it is cheaper, and usually better care.

I should have said pre-Obamacare America had the best healthcare (quality). Obamacare has made healthcare much more expensive, true. But, 37th in the world in quality? That's quite a drop in 6 years. People come from all over the world every year to have the most complex heart surgery and heart transplants at Cleveland Clinic, and Mayo Clinic, etc. I don't think those folks want to go to Brazil and Thailand.

No one disputes the top quality American health care available to those who can pay. The WHO ranking factors in things like distribution, equality, fair financial contribution, responsiveness, life expectancy and so on. The substantial portion of the population who can't pay are out of luck accessing the miracles of modern medicine. This is why the US ranks way behind so many other advanced countries who regard the US health care system as sadly backward and based on greed rather than the public good.

A universal single payer system or variation such a in Canada, Britain, France would be the simplest and fairest. You only have to read the myriad tragic tales of people who raced to the doctor the moment they got their Obamacare coverage and found they were dying anyway of easily preventable conditions had they been able to get earlier care to understand the need. Medical insurance companies only exist to take your money, keep a hefty chunk for profit and dole as few of those dollars back to you as they possibly can. How much more cost efficient to cut out this useless intermediary and pay the money directly to health care providers. Think of the massive decrease in bureaucracy this would create with all those insurance people gone.

Americans are stupid, if they see M.D. title they don't question it. From folks that come from a country that don't wipe their butt, or bathe on a almost daily basis, yeh sure what that person being your doctor?

I don't think the actual QUALITY of healthcare is 37th in the world, but the ranking is for how much you pay for that quality. Many countries offer physicians and other medical personnel, trained in the USA or Europe, and speak English . . . for a fraction of the cost. Therefore, many less Americans have access to quality health care than in many other countries, even those in the Third World. For serious conditions, many will opt to come to America for its state of the art ability to treat those conditions (including many from nearby Canada, who cannot get served quickly in their govt.-run socialist healthcare system). Medical tourism is gaining much traction in places like Latin America, Thailand et al. due to the cost discrepancy and the fact the care (for most people for most maladies) is just as good.

Meg – have you broken down any of those statistics? It seems that the people who are provided with health insurance for free in our country (via Medicaid) are also the ones least likely to use it for things like wellness checkups, birth control, prenatal care etc. The US may be 37th in the world, but it's not because we LACK health care for the poor. It's because many poor people make poor choices with regard to their health, diet, and lifestyle. For instance, the USDA has reported that the most common purchase among food stamp recipients is soda. Guess who are at the highest risk for type 2 diabetes, gingivitis and heart disease? In addition, lifestyle choices such as gang banging takes its toll on you – lead poisoning via catching bullets is a big problem in major cities. This drives up health care costs, but the mortality rate among 18 – 25 year olds looks pretty bad compared to more "civilized" areas such as Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Don't blame guns, health insurance companies or try the usual sorry litany of "misunderstood youth" here. The driver of all of these is that we've allowed a permanent underclass to grow and become entrenched, and have alleviated it of the normal consequences of bad decision making. If that is what you consider to be "social darwinism" then so be it. I call it "real life."

Gruber was wrong about "the stupidity of the American voter". It was the trust of Americans in their government to not lie to them about an issue so critical to their health and well-being. Gruber laughs at their "stupidity", when he is actually contemptuous of their trust. Which he and Obama violated. Said another way, it's pretty easy to cheat someone who trusts you. Small wonder that the American voter has decisively removed them all from public office (a sacred trust).

Meaning are in people, not words. I consider typos to include misspellings, grammatical errors, and goofs in punctuation. I don't think Mr. Ringer committed a typo. I think he unintentionally constructed his sentence so that it meant the opposite of what he intended. Props to Mr. Ringer… and to careful readers.

At least DT defines the act as I have always called it-"The unaffordable health care act".And secondly(I may be wrong on this),but couldn't the 30 million or so people that get the health care subsidised for them or for little or no cost-get medical assisstance for free anyway since a hospital (emergency room) has to treat them anyway according to the Hypocratic Oath ?
All I know is that my wife and I were in the golden zone of unaffordability at 65 k per year-because at that level you missed the minimum subsidy by 1300 dollars and certainly you couldn't afford another 10k a year to buy a $800. a month policy that basically covered nothing.Then you have to pay the 1400 penalty(this year) to do as RJR says-redistribute the wealth that you couldn't afford to do in the first place.The greatest scam in history in my book.

And then there are some of us, who don't even believe in the allopathic mode of medicine AT ALL, nor go to docors unless it's accident or catastrophe. I agree that gov't should stay completely out of sickcare. I do not even want them "supporting" alternative medicine (which is really true healing) because the DC swamp creatures would find a way to control and ruin that too.

In a FREE market, pre-existing conditions would be covered by some companies and the price would be based on free market competition. ObummerCare is just socialized uncompetitive garbage, so the insurance cartel, the big hospital organizations, etc. will get a bigger payday. Eventually, the quality of healthcare in the USA will decline, as many will decide on a different field, rather than put up with the govt. mandates, interference, etc.

In addition to what Mr. Hallett stated, I also challenge the notion that those with pre existing conditions saw extensive benefits under O-care. I worked for a time in patient advocacy for a pharmaceutical manufacturer. My job was to get much needed medication to those who required it, come hell or high water. We were inundated by requests for patient assistance from those who bought into the pre-existing condition propaganda and purchased their O-care policy, only to discover that none of the policies on the market covered the cost of the medication they needed (remember when Obama said, "sometimes you just have to take a pill" to the woman who asked if O-care would have allowed her 80 year old mother to have a pacemaker implanted?). So not only were these individuals having to purchase the meds they needed to remain stable, they also were saddled with O-care premiums. Their insurance did not a thing to assist with the costs associated with their condition.

Why don't you ask the protestors in Washington if they approve of Obamacare? There's a guy from Infowars there right now asking why they don't like Trump and they have 2 responses: a) Trump is a 'fascist" and
b) F— off. They absolutely refuse to debate any issues.

In Canada we are told that we have a great health care system, better than the U.S. and that it is 'free'. And people actually believe it. I guess they also believe in the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy and Santa Claus

Nancy Pelosi, you know the dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks former Speaker, said it ObummerCare will not cost anything, and in fact, we have to pass it to see what's in it. No wonder so many sheeple fall for anything with morons like her in the District of Criminals.

Simple solution, remove age restriction on Medicare. Candy ass elite doctors and Big Pharma won't like it much, and additional revenue streams will be needed, taxes on junk food? And if more folks went on the Tom Brady diet of healthy foods, and got fit, triple win across the board.